


That Befall Preposterously

by moon_custafer



Category: Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare, Original Work
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, F/M, Original Fiction, Romantic Fluff, Shakespeare, amateur thatre, fat appreciation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 10:53:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 17,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16852693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_custafer/pseuds/moon_custafer
Summary: University romance, set against the background of a student Shakespeare production.





	1. Chapter 1

The lecture hall was dim, and the small grey shape in the corner odd enough not to trigger immediate recognition in the ordinary human eye. Sally Ferreira happened to see it move, and so realized it was alive, but it still took her at least ten seconds to perceive what it was: a bat that hadn’t made it home the night before and was now confusedly clinging to the edge of a cement block in the History department building. The student clapped her hand over her mouth. Her first impulse had been to say _oh, a bat_ – and she stifled it, fearing that one of her fellow-students might react in panic.

 

Being out in daylight was strange behaviour, and rabies always a possibility, so after waiting for the rest of the class to file out (luckily there was nothing scheduled for afterwards in the lecture hall), she pulled off the broad crocheted band that normally kept her curly hair out of her eyes, and used it to net the little creature. It made no attempt to escape, but she thought it best to hold it through the thick fabric in case it was rabid.

The professor had left a file box on her desk when she left (it had been full of copies of the syllabus – this was the first week of classes), and Sally gingerly dropped the bat in and closed the lid. _I suppose I’ll have to wait until sunset to release it,_ she thought. _Well, I’ll be fashionably late – if that’s still actually fashionable._

Praying no one would ask why she was carrying a file box – and after all they’d most likely assume she was still moving in – she made her way back to residence. This would be the acid test of her roommate Nadia, a transfer student; it might well wreck their relationship for the remainder of the year if the Poli-Sci major couldn’t deal with wild animals, or with a late departure to the mixer Sally was really only attending because Nadia had asked her to introduce her to everyone. Sally, for her part, was unhappily conscious of how few people she really knew, even after three years at Pearson University. _Need to work on those social skills_ , she told herself. _Except there never seems to be much time, with all my studies. Never seems to be much motive, either._ Her one success in getting out and mingling with her peers had been acting in student plays; it was so much easier to interact with people when she wasn’t being herself. _And it’s still a month and a half until Hallowe’en,_ she thought. She began thinking about what costume to make this year, half-forgetting the bat until she had climbed the stairs and set the box down to unlock the door to their room.

“Oh, I’m still getting ready.” Her roommate looked a bit sheepish as she held up two blouses. “Which one do you think?” Sally gestured towards the one on the left without letting go of the file box:

“No rush. Actually there’s going to be a delay. I have to wait until sundown. Sorry.” Nadia gave the slight, wild-haired girl a suspicious look.

“What, do you have friends who are vampires or something?”

“Close enough.” Sally set the box carefully on her bed and explained the situation.

“A bat?” Nadia asked. “Like, flap, flap, catch mosquitoes? Don’t release it without letting me see.” Unfazed, she pulled her t-shirt off and slipped on the blouse her roommate had approved, fastening the buttons from bottom to top and leaving the upper two undone, allowing a flirty glimpse of her generous décolletage.

“Thanks for being ok with this.” Sally dropped her hairband in the empty laundry bin in her closet and pulled a scarf and a cowl-necked top off of hangers. Might as well get ready herself.

An hour later the girls pried open the window and Sally brought the box close to the sill and opened it. Nothing happened right away, so she tilted the box until something dark swooped out and vanished into the dusk outside.

“Did you see it go?” she asked her roommate.

“Barely. It went like a bat out of – oh, I guess that’s why they say that.” They looked out at the dimming sky, and promptly forgot what had just passed. Sally turned to her roommate:

“I’m sorry, I’ve made us late for the party. Why am I holding this box?” She glanced down at the filebox. Nadia looked puzzled for a moment and then laughed.

“You’re funny. I bet you’re lots of fun at parties.” Sally shrugged:

“Let’s find out.”

Donahue, the Irving Hall ghost, gazed dispassionately out one of the third-storey gables. According to the legend passed on each year to freshmen, he’d been a workman on the building at the time of its construction in 1905, who had caught the eye of the Dean’s daughter and subsequently been killed in a duel by a young professor who’d fancied the girl himself; sympathetic students, the story went, had buried Donahue beneath the quad by cover of night. In reality, he’d fallen from a ladder in a prosaic workplace accident, and his remains lay in the local Catholic cemetery; but he did haunt the building, sensible of his place, however distorted, in the school’s memory.

His transparent eyes tracked the little bat as it swept past his window, flitting towards the Dining Hall, and the ghosts of Lila Mills, the homicidal cook whose plan to poison the entire student body was spoiled when a rat got into the strychnine-laced porridge (had never knowingly poisoned anyone and had died of natural causes in 1954, aged sixty-two) and Doris MacDonald, the girl genius who’d killed herself in shame after getting only ninety-five percent on an exam (perished in the 1918 ‘flu along with three other students, but her loss to the field of engineering was unexaggerated). They too looked up at the small swift shadow as it passed. No living humans paid it any attention.

_“Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments”_

The mixer, sure enough, was already in full swing, and Sally contemplated the young men in the room. As for Nadia, the vivacious poli-sci seemed to be making friends for herself with perfect ease, and had already accepted a bottle of vodka lemonade from a tall, broad-shouldered business major as they shouted conversation over the music and laughter. The music was only one of the problems Sally had with meeting people at these parties. The realization that had begun even before puberty, and which she had since come to accept, was that her taste in men was specific and exacting, embarrassingly so. She knew she wanted a man who was intelligent, kind, and funny – so far so reasonable – but she felt both perverted and shallow that she could only be attracted to a man who was fat.

Even so, an intelligent, kind, funny fat man did not sound, on the surface, like too tall an order – the house contained youth of all shapes and sizes from slender to muscular to chubby, depending upon their various genetics, activities and capacity for beer – but of the four chubby young men she recognized, two she knew to be pleasant but dull as bricks; one was an irritating boor; and the fourth, Mark Donovan, whom she’d had a serious crush upon the previous year, was not only gay but had dropped fifty pounds over the summer break and no longer really qualified as even plump. She _was_ pleased to see that he also appeared to have hooked up with her classmate Colin Hu, an angular young man whose severe good looks did not quite conceal a wry sense of humour. Sally was glad to see him at this party. At least she’d have someone to chat with, if they could hear each other over the music, that is.

She wondered idly how Bob Marley, with his religious lyrics, had come to be college-kid party music. Probably the ganja, but still – were there students in Jamaica chilling to the hymns of Charles Wesley? As she mused on this topic, smiling to herself, a girl in a sparkly halter top bumped into her. Sally caught her by the arm before she lost her balance.

“Thanks,” slurred the girl. “Are you ok? I guess I started drinking too early, I’m drunk already. Hey, I know you – weren’t you in that ancient Greek comedy last year?”

“Uh, _Lysistrata_?”

“The one where the women go on a sex strike for peace?”

“Again, that’d be _Lysistrata_. Yes, I was.”

“I thought so. You were the cock-tease,” the girl added.

“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

“Oh, but you were a _great_ cock-tease,” the student assured her with cheery, drunken kindliness. “You should do more acting. I think they’re putting on some Shakespeare thing this year.”

“It’s _A Midsummer Night’s Dream,_ Karen,” said Colin, coming up and steadying the inebriated student. “Sally, my sister Karen; Karen, Sally. Karen can’t hold her liquor, but she’s right, you should try out. You’ve got the right look for Titania, and you’ve already established you can make love to a man in a funny costume without seeming ridiculous or crass.” Sally wondered just what he meant by “the right look” and recalling that Titania was an elf-queen, pulled her hair self-consciously across her rather prominent ears. Colin turned to his partner, “Mike, would you be a love and get Karen something non-alcoholic?”

“Do they have any cranberry juice?” Karen asked.

“Let’s go find out,” said Mark, and he ambled off to the kitchen with Karen hanging on to his arm.

“So – you and Mark?” Sally asked. Colin sighed happily.

“We started emailing over the summer.”

“He’s lost a lot of weight,” Sally observed.

“He worked up north, tree-planting. Well you know him, he’s all about the environment. I suspect he’ll pack it back on by Christmas,” he added, cautiously. Sally’s interest in Mark, and her preference for larger men, had not gone unnoticed by him.

“Don’t worry, I know Mark’s yours.”

“Good, because I’d hate to have to fight you.”

“I hope you don’t have to fight Karen.”

“I trust Mark’s impeccable taste. Anyway, if he fills out again, she’ll lose interest. Karen likes the buff jocks.” Changing the topic, Colin added; “Seriously, you really should try out for the play. If it’s your last year at school, you should try and make the most of it. Join some clubs.”

“Alright, awriight already, I’ll try out for the Shakespeah,” Sally raised her hand in warning and adopted an exaggerated, nasal Brooklyn accent. Colin chuckled and Mark, returning with Karen and her orange juice in tow, put a muscular arm around his boyfriend’s shoulders.

“What’s all this for?” Colin asked him.

“Just making sure everyone here knows who I’m with,” the bigger man rumbled. “I had to fend off Sally’s new roommate on the way back. Sheesh, I lose a little weight and suddenly I get swarmed. I’m going to take defensive action and eat me some pizza.”

“Works for me. That’s shirt’s too loose on you anyhow.”

Sally chatted with Colin, Mark and Karen until someone cranked the music still louder and conversation became truly impossible. Giving up, she waved to them and pointed at the door. One last glance around the crowded room told her Nadia was still having a good time, so she slipped out and walked back to the women’s residence in the still-warm September evening.

As she passed Irving Hall she saw the light of a streetlamp falling across a poster taped to the door. Below a sketch of a donkey’s face were directions to Friday’s and Saturday’s auditions for the Saloonio Players’ production of William Shakespeare’s _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , to be performed, unseasonably, just before the Christmas break.  
“All right, universe,” Sally muttered, “I get the point.”

Unpacked and installed in her room, but unable to sleep knowing that Nadia was not yet back, Sally went online and found the text of the play, already half-familiar from high-school English class. Skimming through it, she confirmed that there were four speaking parts that were definitely female: Hippolyta, an Amazon queen who sadly didn’t do any fighting in this story; Hermia and Helena, one-half of a quartet of mix-and-match lovers; and Titania, the proud fairy queen who, under the influence of a love potion, fell for Nick Bottom, the comedy relief who moreover had been transformed into a man with an ass’s head. Sally supposed the point was to humiliate the queen, but having less-than-conventional taste in men, she could empathize. _I see why Colin recommended I try out_. She had rather less confidence than her friend in her ability to land the part, though she suspected her slender build, masses of curly hair, and, yes, her ears would make it easy enough to find a place in the fairy court at least.

She heard a key-card click in the heavy electronic lock on the door of the room, and Nadia entered, giggling and smelling faintly of weed.

“You went home so early – missed a good time, Soph. What’re you doing on the computer?”

“Uh. Reading. I’ve decided to try out for a play. I was prepping the dialogue.”

“You’ve got to learn to have fun, honey.”

“I do. In my own way.”


	2. Chapter 2

Sally read the part over again the following morning before getting dressed and proceeding to the dining hall. According to the poster, she’d already missed the first round of auditions; the second began at nine-thirty a.m., and she figured she couldn’t count on all her competition being hungover from Friday night, so she’d donned a t-shirt dress, leggings and her new flats – not an overly dressy outfit, but not as casual as the sweatpants which were usually de rigeur for breakfast – in order to head straight over to the student centre after some fruit and a piece of toast.

 

At the student centre, Sally followed a series of hand-drawn arrows taped to the walls until she reached a closed door, through which she could hear speech; although she could not make out the individual words, she recognized the metre. Pushing the door open a crack, she saw a broad back and shoulders, and a head of red hair. Their owner was holding a script-book and reading from it to a couple of people who she guessed by their expressions of intense scrutiny to be the director and producer. To calm her nerves she focused on what she could see of the actor. He wore jeans, sneakers, and a shirt with small grey checks, untucked and, she guessed, unbuttoned, with the sleeves rolled up. His figure looked pleasantly thick and sturdy.

“I see their knavery,” he muttered, as if to himself, yet still plainly audible. “This is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can: I will walk up and down here, and I will sing,” here raised his voice defiantly, “that they shall hear I am not afraid.”

_The ousel cock so black of hue,_

_With orange-tawny bill,_

_The throstle with his note so true,_

_The wren with little quill –_

His singing was not terribly off-key, but the pathetic slightly flat singing of someone who knows the tune well in his head but can’t quite get it to come out right. One of the director/producer people read Titania’s line from the script:

“What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?” Bottom carried on singing, trying to reassure himself as he walked alone in a dark forest:

_The finch, the sparrow and the lark,_

_The plain-song cuckoo gray,_

_Whose note full many a man doth mark,_

_And dares not answer nay-_ -

“For, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird?” he asked himself, suddenly distracted from his predicament by this question. “Who would give a bird the lie, though he cry ‘cuckoo’ never so?” Musing, he turned, and Sally glimpsed his face; a round, freckled face, with full cheeks, a soft, heavy chin and very blue eyes. His red hair swept adorably across his pale forehead. His unbuttoned shirt revealed he was not quite so large as his face suggested, but a gently convex belly swelled beneath a T-shirt that read EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR. Mechanically, Sally opened the door:

“I prithee, gentle mortal, sing again,” she breathed.

Bottom looked startled at the unexpected turn the audition had taken; but the astonishment writ large upon his features merely pulled more dialogue out of her, as if the words were her own thoughts. “Mine ear is much enamour’d of thy note.” She stole a glance at his paunch: “So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape; and thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me on the first view to say,” She hesitated. “To swear – I love thee.” She took a step towards Bottom and he drew back, intimidated:

“Methinks, mistress,” he pleaded,  “you should have little reason for that.” She took another step toward him. “And yet,” he added, “to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days; the more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them – friends?” His eyes met hers. “Nay,” he smiled nervously, “I can gleek upon occasion.” Sally touched his rounded cheek:

“Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.”

“Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.” Instantly she gripped his wrist with her small hand and, dropping the pitch of her voice, intoned:

“Out of this wood do not desire to go. Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.” Continuing in rhyme, drawing signs as if to cast a spell o’er him, she spoke the words: “I am a spirit of no common rate; The summer still doth tend upon my state.” Her tone softened. “And I do love thee: therefore, go with me.” She smiled up at him: “I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee, and they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, and sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep.” Trying not to blush, she added, “And I will purge thy mortal grossness so, that thou shalt like an airy spirit go.” She wondered whether to call her minions as in the script, but at that moment a voice broke in upon the two of them:

“Thanks, that’ll do. What’s your name?” It was the one she guessed was the director.

“Sally Ferreira.”

“Great reading, Sally, but you do realize the audition for Titania doesn’t start for half-an-hour? We were just running lines with Donald here.” Sally wanted to sink through the floor, but Donald took her hand and shook it.

“I liked your performance,” he whispered. “Don’t worry; and give them your email address; they’ll want it.”

*   *   *   *   *

Gordon raised his hand and Sally gritted her teeth. The student had already spent the first week-and-a-half of the “English Literature, Medieval to Early Modern” class demanding “hard evidence” that Geoffrey Chaucer had existed at all and that he’d really written the poems that were credited to him. She hadn’t yet decided if he was sincere, or deliberately angling for the result he usually got, which was to force the professors to spend ten minutes of each class defining and defending basic terms and principles. Actually, considering that it was a third-year course, he had to be trolling.

“How do we know Sir Philip Sidney didn’t just write all this stuff because he was insane, or on drugs?” he asked.

The professor sighed.

“There are no incidents on record that suggest Sir Philip suffered any mental illness,” she began wearily; “and recreational drugs in Europe at the time were pretty much limited to alcohol; also _The Fairy Queen_ fits within a tradition of fantastic allegory.”

“How do we know the _other_ poets in the tradition weren’t all insane?” asked Gordon smugly. Everyone else groaned under their breath.

“You know,” snapped the prof, “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.”

“I paid good money for this course. You can’t refuse an honest question.”

“An _honest_ question, yes, but _every_ time we’ve introduced a writer in this course, you’ve asked whether he or she was insane. At a certain point you have to accept that if there’s no known evidence that they were –“

“But isn’t the writing itself evidence?” The prof jumped on a counter-argument:

“You consider all works of fiction to be evidence of a mental disturbance?” The class tittered in support, but Gordon doubled down:

“If it’s got all this supernatural stuff in it, I want to know if they thought it was real. And if they did, doesn’t that make them disturbed?” He folded his arms.

“Like I said, there’s a tradition of the supernatural as literary device–”

“But how do you know _they_ thought it was a device? Maybe –“

“Maybe the entire literate population of pre-Modern Europe were all just insane?”

“In a word, yes.” _Turtles all the way down_ , Sally thought. She raised her hand:

“Doesn’t this sort of argument come along later with the Enlightenment? In which case, can’t we save it until then? The rest of us paid to take this course too, and we’d like to be able to learn a bit about the material before we start deconstructing everything.”

“YEAH!” bellowed a student at the back. He had the physique of a football player; it was the first time he’d opened his mouth since the beginning of the semester; and Gordon was surprised, and perhaps cowed, into silence long enough for the professor to resume her lecture.

Afterwards, Gordon watched the big student shoulder his bag and head out. Others were making their way to the next class or chatting with the professor. He stood up and made for the door himself, pausing by the left-hand side of Sally’s right-hand desk.

“No hard feelings.” he stated, rather than asked. “Asking questions is good. Shows you’re using your brain. Independent thought isn’t always welcome, you know, especially when everyone else in the room has drunk the kool-aid. You ask a lot of questions,” he added, “but she doesn’t seem to mind when _you_ do it.” Unsure if there was an accusation buried in the comment, Sally decided to shrug non-committally. She focussed on getting her books back in her tote bag as quickly as possible, hoping that doing so would convey the impression of having an appointment elsewhere. In fact she did, but she suspected that if she said so he’d demand proof of it. Luckily at that moment two other students pushed by, brushing Gordon’s elbow, and as he turned his head in annoyance she muttered something vague enough to be unassailable and flipping up the writing surface on her desk, made her escape. The Saloonio Players had finally emailed her an announcement of the first cast read-through.

Sally checked her watch and decided there was no way she could make it to the Dining Hall and back before they started, so she bought a large coffee and a slightly-stale muffin from the student centre’s coffee-shop, and five minutes later was climbing the stairs to the Players’ rehearsal space.

Early as she was, she was not the first arrival – several people were hanging about, conversing excitedly. Nor were they all strangers: perched on one arm of a battered leather sofa, Colin grinned back at her, a bit sheepishly. He was holding a script and wearing a black t-shirt with PCUK printed on it in large white block letters. Sally walked up and dropped her tote bag on the sofa. She dropped it somewhat emphatically.

“Did you know you’d been cast when you suggested I try out?” she demanded.

“No! No – had a good feeling about it, but no, I wasn’t sure; and I didn’t want to mention it because how embarrassing would it be if you’d got in and I hadn’t?”

“Hey Colin,” murmured a voice behind her, and Sally almost jumped. “Oh I’m sorry,” Donald said, noticing her expression and taking it for alarm. “Didn’t mean to startle.” He unslung his knapsack, grunting slightly as he bent down to set it on the floor. Sally felt an excited twinge at the sight of his hefty midriff overrolling the waistband of his jeans as he performed this action. Today’s T-shirt read: THERE ARE 10 KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD – THOSE THAT UNDERSTAND BINARY AND THOSE THAT DON’T.

“It’s all right,” she said.

“Guess who’s playing Bottom?” Donald grinned down at Colin, who threw a suspicious look at his castmate:

“Are you setting up a punchline for me?”

“Just thought we’d better get all the bad puns out of the way early.”

“It’s Shakespeare,” Sally interrupted. “There is no end to the puns. Age cannot wither nor custom stale their infinite variety.” The big young man chuckled and an adorable dimple appeared in his left cheek.

“If you can do nerd humour,” he said, “then it’s going to be a pleasure working with you.”


	3. Chapter 3

To Sally’s chagrin, she did not see much of Donald over the following two weeks. He was a student at one of the other colleges, so he did not eat in the same dining hall as herself; and she did not wish to draw Colin and Karen’s comments by asking after him too frequently.

 

He’d sent her a Facebook request after the first rehearsal; they frequently “liked” each other’s posts and occasionally exchanged comments. Once or twice they had exchanged messages about rehearsals, but more often than not she found herself checking the sidebar to see that he was online, only to freeze up at the thought of messaging him – pestering him, more like. Instead she would re-read their earlier exchanges and try to satisfy her longing that way.

The players continued to meet, of course, when not attending classes. They’d done a few full-cast read-throughs, and were now meeting in smaller groups a couple of times a week to rehearse individual scenes. The director, perhaps wisely, was mainly focussed on directing the Helena-Hermia-Demetrius-Lysander scenes, striving to help the actors make the love quadrangle believable; and so Bottom, Peter Quince and the Mechanicals were left much to their own devices, while Sally was usually called to rehearse with Oberon or with the four  girls who played Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed. It was a little over a month after the audition before she quietly admitted her frustration:

“It’s just over two months till the show and Donald and I haven’t had a chance to work on our scenes with (director) yet.”

“Don’t worry,” said Mustardseed. “You two were fine in the read-through.”

“But we need to think about the blocking. I’m not even sure how physical the director wants us to get.”

“Yeah, I don’t envy her that,” Cobweb said to Peaseblossom, casually and just loud enough for Sally to hear.

“Oh I don’t mind getting up close,” she said deliberately. “I just don’t want us looking awkward on the night – at least, I want any awkwardness to be the characters being awkward and not us being unprepared,” she finished, hoping the explanation had made sense to the other performers.

*     *     *    *     *

Passing through the Student Centre’s reading room on the way back to residence, Sally noticed the Old Lady in Flip-flops, seemingly lost in a book; she recognized her, for she was one of the people who showed up to every public performance, regardless of whether they knew the players. There were several of them, though they never interacted as a group: the man in the tan coat and the too-small feathered hat; the two old ladies with hair-dos hearkening back to the 1940s; the silent young man who observed every performance, comic or serious, with the same gravity. Sally could never figure out if the Old Lady in Flip-flops was homeless or a highly-eccentric alumna of the school; not that the two states were mutually incompatible. She was, at any rate, evidently someone entirely without fear of the fashion police: beside the flip-flops, she was clad in a boxy, navy-blue jacket and grey trousers. Lipstick in a salmon-pink shade glared against her withered face, and her bobbed hair was dyed a severe, unflattering jet black, with an off-centre white streak where the side-part showed her roots. Unexpectedly, she cut short Sally’s assessment by looking up:

“Hello dear – rehearsals going well?”

“Pretty well.”

“My husband used to act, when we were students. I remember he once played the part of an old sea captain. I glued cotton swabs to his face. He looked very convincing. When does the show go on?”

“Just before Christmas break; I don’t remember the exact date, but we’ll put up posters well before then.”

“Ah good. I’ll be there.”

*     *     *     *     *

Thursday next, after an afternoon lecture on _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_ , with interruptions by Gordon, Sally, wrapped in a nubbly cardigan (they evenings were beginning to be chill), dashed across campus, dodging cars as she crossed the road from the corner with the War Memorial to one with the Student Centre, and arrived at rehearsal with her usual coffee-and-muffin-in-lieu-of-dining-hall, only to find Donald and the other Mechanicals all running lines.

Donald’s t-shirt fit a bit more snugly than the one he’d worn at the audition, though Sally did not think it was a smaller size – his belly looked to have grown a bit rounder and more prominent. He was putting on weight as the autumn progressed, and she could not resist speculating on how delightful he’d look by the end of the semester if he allowed himself to keep going.

“My chief humour is for a tyrant –” he was declaiming:

_The raging rocks, And shivering shocks,_

_Shall break the locks of prison gates!_

He struck a heroic pose, brandishing the hockey stick handle that someone had brought along as a sword. Raising his arms pulled up his shirt and exposed several inches of jiggling stomach.

“No, that’s Bottom the _Reaver_ _,_ ” someone quipped. Sally installed herself on the sofa and took a sip of her coffee, enjoying the spectacle of Donald blushing and tucking his shirt back in.

“Ok guys, take a break. Sally, you’re here, good. You and Donald will be working on your scenes later.” At her name, Donald looked up with a start, and she ducked uselessly behind her muffin – _Oh, like that’s going to impress him_ – but he came and sat down heavily beside her.

“I don’t think they’re going to need us for a bit,” he said. “Mind if I go get something to eat? I came straight from class.”

“Me too. We can talk about the script on the way, if you like.” The big young man nodded:

“There’s a truck selling Chinese food on the next block. That do for you?”

*     *     *     *     *

Fifteen minutes later they were back at the student centre, opening plastic bags and foam cartons on a bench outside the rehearsal space. Sally speared a bit of beef with a plastic fork; the food truck had not been the sort to give out chopsticks, but the food was tasty enough. Donald was happily shovelling fried rice into his mouth as she watched; she was glad that his earlier wardrobe malfunction, even if it had caused him to blush, had not translated into any shame about eating.

“Sorry,” he gasped when the rice had been reduced to a few remaining grains. “I was starved – not that I look it, I know.” He patted his stomach and his dinner companion tried not to stare too hard at the way it jiggled. “Still, I guess it goes with the part. Bottom can’t be too handsome or no one would take him seriously as a fool.”

“He’s not exactly a fool,” Sally retorted, “or else he’s the sort of fool who knows the right way to behave when you find yourself in a fairy tale: conceal your surprise and be polite to all the weird beings.” Donald paused with a forkful of noodles halfway to his mouth:

“Also works for Philip Marlowe. Next year I say we do a sequel – _Nick Bottom, Private Eye_.”

“Can I be the femme-fatale client?”

“Absolutely.” He downed the noodles just as Sally commented:

“You seem to have pretty wide-ranging taste in literature.” Unable to answer with his mouth full, Donald chewed and swallowed frantically.

“We have to do at least one Humanities course per semester as a breadth requirement,“ he explained when he was able to speak again. "Luckily it’s taught by Dr. Liege. He used to be a naval officer – word is he captained a submarine during the Cold War – and he absolutely loves the Romantic poets; he can’t read Keats out loud without choking up. So it’s hard not to like him.”

“I’ve got Professor Avery –   _he_ looks as though he should be either hosting a BBC nature documentary, or smuggling guns; possibly one as a cover for the other. Also, I think he really does have an obsession with Charles the First’s head. He’s brought it up twice since the start of the semester. What are you majoring in, then?”

“Civil engineering. Though,” Donald added, spearing a chicken ball with his plastic fork, “I’ve spent the last two weeks working with slime mold. We’re trying an experiment they did in Japan, where they grew slime mold on a slide that looked like a map of Tokyo, with the food sources placed where the major stations are. The idea is that the mold will grow in a network that either matches the actual layout of the supply lines, or is even more efficient than the layout humans devised.” He popped the chicken ball in his mouth.

“Planning layouts by slime mold?” Sally asked, then realizing she needed to keep talking until Donald finished chewing, added “Well, there are worse ways I guess.” The engineer nodded gratefully.

“I like the one,” he continued, “where you don’t lay any paths for the first six months, and then put them in where the grass has worn down, because those are the routes people take in real life. But it’s a bit hard to explain the delay to the public.”

“Someone needs to apply that to the crosswalks on campus. Right now your choices on the corner outside are: chance it and try not to get hit by a car; or walk three blocks over to where they’ve put the actual crosswalk so it connects one empty lot to another.”

“I know, Marco’s started an online petition to get one put there.” Colin had come up the stairs without them hearing, and was now folding himself to sit down on the other side of Donald. “I’ll forward it to you both if you like it or not.” Just then the door to the rehearsal room opened:

“Are Bottom and Titania back yet?”

“Aye aye!” Donald raised his hand, although the director could not see him through the half-open door. “We’ve also got a Puck.”

They began the scene of their meeting, as they had on the day of auditions. Every so often they would stop to discuss a line reading. This time, Sally called Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed.

“Be kind and courteous to this gentleman,” she began, “Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes.” Cobweb made the acting decision to roll her eyes at this line. Sally pretended not to nice and continued: “Feed him with apricocks and dewberries; with purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries.”

As Titania, she glanced admiringly in his direction and noticed Donald looked pretty well-fed already after having downed one container of fried rice, one of noodles, and a half-dozen chicken balls. To keep from squirming, she half-closed her eyes and tried to focus on the night breeze coming through a window someone had opened earlier. “The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs, and light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes, to have my love to bed and to arise.” Her voice grew breathy as she pictured glowing candles in the crisp darkness outside the window. Daring another glance at “Bottom,” she found Donald’s face lit up like a full moon in a very believable impression of a man who has stumbled across a larger world and, though unafraid, isn’t quite certain what to make of it.

_And pluck the wings from Painted butterflies_

_To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes:_

_Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies._


	4. Chapter 4

Donald sat on the floor with his back against a chair that had been pulled to the side of the room, representing an as-yet-unbuilt set piece. Perched on the chair’s arms and seat, the fairies were mussing his hair as Sally curled up beside him on the carpet.

“Hey,” came the director’s voice. “Maybe pat his stomach on the line, ‘say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat?’”

“Do you mind?” Sally asked Donald with a sidelong glance at the director. Donald smiled and shook his head. Gently, she rubbed his belly, noting how tight and full it was after the meal she’d watched him down. He closed his eyes as though he enjoyed it – _or he’s just acting_ , she told herself firmly.

“Maybe lay your head on his chest, now.” _They’re having me do everything I’d like to do to him, and I can’t let on that I really am aroused. How do I cope with this?_

Over the next few minutes, Sally received and obeyed instructions to kiss Donald’s chubby, freckled cheeks, chuck him under the chins, wrap her arms about his thick yet supple love handles, and pretend to sleep with her head pillowed on his round, gurgly belly. The struggle to do all this and remember her lines was enough that she didn’t notice his widening, delighted eyes. At last the delicious torture ended:

“Okay, that’s all for tonight, people.”

“Are you coming to the pub?” Donald asked Sally as she looked around, somewhat dazed. Had there been this many cast members watching when rehearsal began?

“Sure. Is everyone going?”

“Looks like most of us are.” The hefty young man struggled to his feet and made his way towards the couch where her cardigan lay draped across the back. He took it and handed it to her before picking up his knapsack.

The seat in the Jolly Roger pub were long wooden benches and the tables equally rough, though at the insistence of the local Department of Health they were clean. When the waitress came ‘round Sally ordered a vodka lemonade and next to her Donald asked for a beer and a large plate of nachos. Recalling the apparent comfort he’d shown earlier with having his belly played with, she asked impishly:

“Still hungry?”

“I do like my eats.”

*    *    *    *

At lunch the following day, Sally was gazing at the plate her sandwich lay upon, trying to estimate its size relative to the plate of nachos she’d watched Donald consume the night before, when:

“Nadia, are you ok?” Her roommate had walked in with eyes wide in shock.

“Almost got hit by a car on the way here,” Nadia said flatly, setting down her bag by the dining-hall table and pulling up a chair. Sally edged her chair closer and put her arm around her.

“Corner by the student centre?” she asked. “The one where there’s no crosswalk but should be?” Nadia nodded as Sally turned to Marco:

“Did you ever hear back from Town council about that petition you sent?” Marco tore open a packet of butter.

“Got back a form letter,” he grunted and spread the butter across his toast as though taking out his frustration on the innocent bread. “At this point I’m tempted to go out with a bucket of paint myself.” Sally’s eyes lit up fiercely:

“Maybe we should. Get some spraypaint and tape, we could stencil it in quickly.”

“I was kidding.”

“Yeah, but it would force the town to pay attention to that corner, even if they only went out to try and wash it off – I don’t think they can wash spraypaint off of asphalt, and if they painted over it, that would still mark it as a crosswalk. We should totally do this,” Sally exclaimed, turning to Nadia, who made a face.

“Um, Black person here? If I get caught spraypainting anything, the authorities are going to get out their stereotype goggles.”

“Ooh, sorry,” apologized Sally, shocked. “Good point. Um, you heard nothing of any of this.”

“Any of what? Of course,” Nadia added, taking a sip of coffee, “I’m writing my term essay on the idea of citizen interventions, so if it works I’m totally citing it as a case in point.” Marco swallowed the last of his buttered toast. Like Donald, he’d put on weight since the first week of school, but he looked square rather than round.

“So, as a detached observer,” he asked Nadine, “with a Poly-Sci background, what might a group of… citizens… do, to help an unofficial crosswalk get taken seriously?”

“Good morning, Sally,” came an overly-loud greeting as Gordon passed the table in dining hall where Sally sat talking with Nadia and Marco. She kept her expression and tone carefully neutral as she answered:

“Good morning.”

“Hey, Big Guy” (this was addressed to Marco), “you’re sitting with the girls instead of at our house table?”

“Looks like I am,” said Marco, not looking up. “And I’m holding the empty seat for Colin, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, I wasn’t trying to intrude,” Gordon said, but he dragged his feet as he walked to the table where the other men of West House were finishing up their lunch.

“Is he as annoying to you guys as he is in class?” Sally whispered to Marco.

“He’s quiet enough around us. Usually on the computer.”

“Then it’s the people on the internet I pity,” she muttered, as Nadia made muffled choking sounds into her coffee. “Anyway, I’ve got to get to class.” She carried her tray to the conveyor belt that carried it back into the kitchen, avoiding any glance in the direction of West House’s table as she passed in case Gordon took it as permission for a conversation. She knew he was anxious to denounce their professor’s latest retort to him:

_“But it’s so unrealistic,” he’d complained. “People don’t just get up and start talking in poetry in real life.” Professor Carlsberg had drawn herself up to her full height of five feet, three inches, and fixed Gordon with her gimlet eye: “Speak for yourself,” she’d hissed, as the rest of the class laughed._

Passing the West House table was like running a one-man gauntlet, but fortunately several of the students were discussing decorations for the Hallowe’en party, and Gordon’s attention was distracted, allowing Sally to escape without comment. She stepped outside; the fall air filled her head with images of fresh apples; and from there it was only a short step to picturing Donald’s rounded cheeks. She sighed, and headed to her class.


	5. Chapter 5

The air had been lightly crisp – by the following Wednesday it was distinctly chill, and the leaves were nearly all turned to orange and red. Early mornings were still bright, though, and Sally blinked painfully.

* * *

She did not actually have a class until later; nor had she meant or needed to pull an all-nighter – her paper had been ready to print shortly after one a.m. – but the coffee she had drunk while writing it had kept her mind racing, and by seven, sick of staring at the walls, she’d left her room telling herself that if she couldn’t sleep, at least the fresh air might nudge her from half-awake to fully so.

She walked around the campus twice, feeling slightly unreal. Once a leaf blew across her path, and for a moment the memory of a tiny winged creature flitted across her mind, but didn’t stay. Drifting towards the engineering department, she glanced up from her shoes just in time to note a familiar figure slouching towards her.

“Hey Donald!” When his broad face brightened in recognition, she added “You’re up early too, I see.”

“Had to get a project done before Thanksgiving*. I guess you had a similar situation?”

“Something like that.” The stout engineer yawned:

“Want to get a coffee and breakfast?”

“I’ve had too much coffee already, but I guess I could eat something.”

“Lord knows I could. I haven’t eaten since –” he squeezed his eyes shut, thinking: “seven o’clock last night. I require bacon. And French toast.” Sally smiled:

“So, Athens, then?”

The Athens Grill was an old-school diner founded three generations back be a Greek family. Situated just off-campus, it had long been a popular hang-out, and frequently a hangover cure, for the local students. Sally and Donald stepped into the warm, yellow-toned interior and took a booth. Donald squeezed in without too much difficulty, but Sally was not too sleepy to notice that his paunch just grazed the edge of the table. It was a pleasant sight and perked her up greatly as she sipped an orange juice and waited for her toast to arrive. When it did, it was dwarfed by Donald’s breakfast. For twenty minutes, he munched on stacks of french toast bacon and sausage as he listened to Sally describe her history paper, and the sleepless night that had lasted until now. For her part, she slyly watched his stomach round out and gently press against the table, until she stumbled over her words and her eyelids lowered.

“Sally –” Donald was touching her hand gently across the table. Dimly she noticed his empty plate.

“I’m ok.”

“No you’re not. You just tried to explain how Sir John A. MacDonald completed the railway with lasagna. I think you need to sleep.” He waved to the waitress and mimed calculating their bill, then squirmed awkwardly and fished his wallet out of his tight back pocket. “I’ll pay for both of us – you hardly ate anyway,” he added as he struggled out of the booth. Sally giggled drowsily as she got up, and patted Donald’s belly. His straining t-shirt (“STAGE NINJA”) was smooth and warm across his full-fed body, and at her touch he gave a little start of surprise that caused his sides to jiggle. “Jeez,” he murmured, putting an arm about her, “You’re really out of it. Can you make it back to your room all right?”

“No, just let me go to sleep here,” Sally mumbled, resting her head against his chest.

“Sally,” Donald whispered. She looked up, and his chubby face was earnest. “My room is closer – do you want to go crash there? I’m pretty sleepy too, especially after all that food.” When she nodded, walked with her to the counter at the front, paid their bill, and the two of them made their way slowly to the concrete-block co-ed residence on the newer corner of the campus. The engineer’s room was cluttered but clean, with a big cork board on one wall that held dozens of photos, cartoons and newspaper clippings, mostly relating to his chosen career or to his friends and their interests. That was all Sally could take in before she collapsed gratefully onto the bed next to the cork board. Donald peeled off his jacket, folded it and placed it on the floor by his desk, then lay down with his head upon it.

“No, you shouldn’t have to – ” she protested this excessive gallantry. He waved to her from the floor:

“Better this way. I’ve got to unbutton these pants – I’ve got roommates, and I don’t want them to get the wrong idea. Besides,” he added, “Bed’s too small.” Sally could not fault this logic, and pulling the blanket over herself, she closed her eyes. It was delicious to feel sleepy now that she could give into it. Donald was snoring on the carpet, but not loudly enough to keep her from drifting off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canadian Thanksgiving is before Hallowe'en.


	6. Chapter 6

_“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains”_

Sally awoke to the sound of people trying not to wake someone. By half-opening her eyes, she could make out Donald’s broad, blurred form near the door, in conversation with a smaller youth.

“Yes,” Donald was saying in response to some comment the other had made, “they study all night in the Humanities, too. Now let her sleep. Let me sleep.”

“All I said was that you’ve got some self-control, dude.”

“You said a bit more than that– and she’s a friend – not that it’s any of your business.”

“She friend-zoned you?”

“I said she was a friend; I never said she friend-zoned me. Don’t you have some data to massage?” The other student seemed to take the hint, for he picked up his knapsack and left, muttering that he’d be in the common room. Donald turned and saw that Sally was awake. She gave him an apologetic wave.

* * *

“Sorry you had to hear all that,” he grinned sheepishly.

“It’s ok. Thanks for kicking him out, though.” She wanted to add that she had no desire to ‘friend-zone’ Donald, just the opposite. _You plan to tell him right now? In his room? Maybe he only wants to be friends with **you** , ever think of that?_ The taste of orange juice in her mouth reminded her she’d lain down without brushing her teeth, and slept for who knows how many hours. _What if he says yes, kisses you, and you have awful breath?_ “Um, do you mind if I use the bathroom?” Donald opened the door:

“No problem, it’s to your left and round the corner.” Sallly tried not to exhale as she slipped past him, or on the other hand to walk so fast he might think she was fleeing him. In the bathroom (mercifully empty) she stared wild-eyed and wild-haired in the mirror for what felt like a long time. _Augh. Your makeup’s smudged and you probably drooled in your sleep and he probably saw you do it and you’re stupid._  

Eventually, after washing her face, rinsing her mouth, and taking a few deep breaths, she managed to convince herself she was not really a particularly repellent specimen of humanity, and tiptoeing back, she knocked timidly on the engineer’s door (next to the one with eight vinyl LPs tacked to it).

Donald had apparently changed in her absence, for he was tugging at the hem of a t-shirt that said SCHRODINGER’S UNDERGRAD, with a schematic face that smiled on one side and had a lolling tongue and X’d-out eye on the other; and which fit him a bit better than the one he’d worn to breakfast.

“Thanks for letting me crash. I hope I didn’t do anything to embarrass you –”

“Oh, if you mean Brent – the one I had to kick out – he’s… one of those guys who thinks women are either malfunctioning males or some kind of alien goddesses. Nothing he said was your fault.”

“That must make for some problems, in a co-ed residence.”

“Well, luckily, even Brent knows not to try floorcest.”

“Floorcest? Oh, dating someone from your own floor in residence.”

“And the girls on this floor could all kick his ass anyway. I mean, he’s harmless - oh no, should I not have brought you here? I don’t want you to feel unsafe.” He looked so worried for a moment that Sally laughed.

“It’s all right,” she said, resisting the urge to hug Donald’s warm, soft middle. “I feel pretty secure with you around.” Donald blushed.

“Would you…” he began. “Would you like to see the slime mold map I made of the campus.” Sally’s heart had been in her mouth – now she felt a mix of disappointment and relief. She could put her romantic worries aside for another occasion when she felt more glamourous.

*      *      *      *      *

Colin and Mark were stapling flyers in the entrance way when she returned to residence in the late afternoon.

“Take some to put up in the common room?” Colin asked, pushing a handful of photocopies on orange paper at her. Sally positioned the strap of her bag more securely on her shoulder and took a sheaf.

> _The WEST HOUSE MEN’S RESIDENCE_  
>  presents  
> HALLOWEEN PARTY  
> Friday, October 30th, 8 pm  
> GHOSTS ARE OUT TONIGHT – THERE’S SAFETY IN NUMBERS!

There was some clip art of a chainsaw photoshopped onto a pumpkin that was wearing a goalie mask. Next to this gruesome still-life was an incongruous picture of a mug of beer.

“I had nothing to do with the design,” Colin protested. “I was too busy to draw them anything better – argh, that reminds me, I promised Karen I’d draw her a bunch of fake tattoos for her Hallowe’en costume; now I’ll have to buy some washable markers so she won’t be a walking art gallery for the rest of the semester.”

“I guess I’d better start planning a costume for myself, then.” Sally was halfway to the ground floor’s common room when she stopped. _Damn. Gordon’s in their residence, isn’t he?_ The thought of having to deal with her classmate’s passive-aggressive… attacks? attempts at flirtation? all evening, even with friendlier faces in the room, sucked all the buoyancy out of her mood, and while she dutifully pinned up the flyers to the bulletin boards of each floor’s common room, by the time she reached her own floor she was jabbing the tacks into the paper vengefully into the pumpkin’s masked face and pretending it was Gordon’s.


	7. Chapter 7

“You all right? I thought you said you liked Hallowe’en.” While Sally took out her frustration on the bulletin board, Nadia had entered the common room with a cardboard box of student-y groceries (mostly ramen, though there was a carton each of milk and orange juice too). The Poli-Sci picked up a pad of sticky notes from the counter and began writing down her name and labelling each item before placing it in the cupboard or fridge, as Sally explained the fly named Gordon in this particular jar of ointment.

“I know,” she finished, “I have the right to wear what I want without being molested – but I’ve seen this guy in class – he’s creepy enough to make me uncomfortable and smart enough not to do anything I can actually lodge a complaint about. So I have three realistic options: one, skip the party altogether; two, go to the party and be on my guard the whole time; or three – wear something that hides me from him. I’m not thinking burqua so much as a Darth Vader costume –” she paused. “Or a weaponized robot. Do you still need that cardboard box?” When Nadia shook her head, Sally picked up the empty box and gaged its width against the breadth of her shoulders. “I’ll need to collect some more,” (having, as a child, gone trick-or-treating dressed as a tube of toothpaste, Sally had sworn never again to design herself a costume with a stiff one-piece body), “but I’m going home this weekend, and unless my parents have suddenly decided to clean out the garage, there should be plenty.”

“Problem solved, then?” Nadia asked. “My work here is done.”

“Do you have a costume?”

“I was thinking of Sailor Mercury, but now I’m worrying that’ll just end with me spending the whole night telling people that I’m not Nicki Minaj.”

“Do you already have the uniform? You might have to be Sailor Moon – at least there’s no mistaking that hairdo.”

“Yeah, but Sailor Mercury was always my favourite.” Sally frowned:

“Would it be cheesy to carry around a thermometer, to make it obvious?” Nadia laughed.

“That…. could work. I think my mom’s got one. When do you head home for Thanksgiving, by the way?”

“Friday, as soon as I get back from my morning class.”

* * *

Sally had always liked taking trips, even on low-glamour means of transportation like the greyhound bus. It got her away from her life, even if it was only for a few hours.

Donald had been primarily rehearsing the “Pyramis and Thisbe” bits the night before, and afterwards when everyone went out to the pub he’d seemed to avoid her, taking a seat at the other end of the table and talking with the director. When she’d bid him good night and a happy Thanksgiving weekend, he’d returned her hug awkwardly.

“Eat many things,” she’d added, and then blushed, feeling ridiculous.

Well. She’d worry about Donald later, and she’d bury her worries about Gordon in work on her Hallowee’n costume. In truth she really was looking forward to a couple of days of home and family.

With her small weekend bag packed, she left the campus and caught a city bus to the terminal where she walked around the corner, bought a sandwich and a coffee from the Tim Horton’s, and returned to wait for her ride, shivering a little in the cold air. She’d just thrown the cup and wrapper in a litter bin when the big bus pulled into the bay. The driver descended and opened the luggage hatch, but she didn’t have anything large with her, so she showed him her ticket and he waved her towards the holepunch machine by his seat.

Inside the bus, the grey upholstery was oddly soothing. Sally took a window seat near the back and closed her eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

“We’ve arrived.” One of Sally’s fellow passengers, a woman in a bomber jacket, was tapping her cautiously on the shoulder. **  
**

“Erm? Oh, thanks for waking me.” Retrieving her weekend bag, she climbed down from the bus to find her father waving cheerily. He must have noticed her blinking in the bright sunshine, for after hugging her, he said:

“You look like you’ve had a few late nights recently. Studying too hard or partying too hard?” Sally smiled in spite of herself. She knew she was considered the wallflower of her family. Clapping her on the shoulder, her father added: “Well, we need to swing by the shopping plaza on the way home – pick up some chouriço for the stuffing.” (Sally’s parents did a traditional North American turkey, with some Portuguese additions.) “Why don’t you get some coffee. That and a browse through the dollar store, you’ll feel like a new woman.”

“You know my weakness, Dad.” Well, perhaps not her every weakness. She’d never brought a boy home, after all.

Mr. Ferreria laughed through his moustache and climbed behind the wheel of the family car. They followed the curving roadways and pulled into the plaza parking lot. Taking her purse only, Sally waved briefly to her father, said:

“Meet you back here with the coffee,” and headed for the bright lights of the dollar store. Christmas and Hallowe’en items had been separated into adjacent aisles to avoid conflict. She strolled down each, looking for items to incorporate, and eventually settled on a spindle-shaped hanging tree ornament that flipped upside-down would, she thought, make a picturesque antenna. Then she hit the kitchenware aisle and picked up a couple of black quilted oven mitts, before paying and walking next door to pick up two medium double-doubles. Her father had left the car doors unlocked, but she waited outside for him, sipping her coffee while his sat cooling on the hood. She watched idly as shoppers carried items and loaded them into trunks, trying not to think about contacting Donald. _If he wants to call, he will_. She took out her phone and looked at his name on her contact list. She was about to open and re-read his past texts – no harm in that, after all – when her father reappeared with a grocery bag on each arm.

“How many things did you just pick up?”

“Well, I figured we might run out of rolls. And they had coffee on sale. And also oranges.”

* * *

_The trouble with feasting on family-oriented holidays_ , Sally thought, is that it’s your own family that you get to watch overeat, which completely quelches the sex appeal. Shuddering at the thought of her father and uncle rubbing their stomachs and uttering rueful comments about having to diet for the next two months before doing it over again at Christmas, she fled to the garage to work on her costume. There were plenty of cardboard boxes, at least, and some leftover black spray paint with the Hallowe’en decorations she’d made for the front yard back in high school.

“Are you going to put those up?” One of her smaller cousins had followed her from the kitchen.

“Maybe later. I’m working on my costume.” With a black turtleneck and skinny jeans as a foundation, the oven-mitt “claws” and some sort of cardboard greaves over her biggest boots she could make this work. All that remained was to construct a mask. Sally had planned on using another cardboard box for the head, but when she came across an empty wastepaper bin, a happy thought struck her. Inverting it on her head, she checked the mirror and confirmed that she could see out through the black plastic mesh, while no one would be able to see in unless they brought their faces very close.

“Gordon probably won’t even be able to tell I’m female in this,” she exulted. “Now I just need to figure out how to attach the antenna.”

“Fishing line and hot glue? And who’s Gordon?”

“Someone I don’t like much, but he’s going to be at the same party, so I’d rather he not recognize me.”

“Like Mercia at my school?”

“Possibly.”

“What about people at the party you _do_ like?”

“I’ll have to tell them what my costume’s going to be, I guess. Or come up and talk to them once I get there.”

* * *

“Nice Hermes get-up.” Grateful, Colin cautiously hugged Sally’s boxy costume.

“See? She gets it. Everyone else thinks I’m supposed to be Daisy Buchanan.”

“I suppose the tunic could look like a dress if you tilt your head. But I’ve had thought the wings were a giveaway.”

“And there’s no way I look like Gatsby,” rumbled Mark, adjusting the wreath of grape vines on his head. “I still think we should’ve gone as Norse gods, hon. I worry about you freezing your butt off.”

“Don’t worry, you’re my big heating pad.”

“Somebody say heating pad?” Nadia came up behind with her giant prop thermometer. “Sally, I’m not sure people are getting the Sailor Mercury costume. I may just have to claim I’m a sexy nurse.” 

“Well, whatever works.” Sally peered through the mesh of her wastepaper-bin mask at the roomful of partygoers. There were a lot of sexy fill-in-the-blanks, of all genders. Also a highway (a sexy highway?) – someone in black, anyway, with a white stripe down the front and little toy cars stuck on at intervals. The cars distinguished it from the skunk costume standing nearby. Near the door Godzilla had arrived, and was being photographed by Andy Warhol as two women in prom gowns, butterfly wings and false moustaches looked on. Gordon seemed absent from the scene, but so did Donald.


	9. Chapter 9

Godzilla lurked next to a couch; his tail evidently kept him from sitting, and after a while he leaned himself carefully against a nearby wall, narrowly avoiding a lighting sconce and an electrical switch.

“Hey, a lounge lizard,” chirped Karen. She wore black jeans and a bustier, and Colin had indeed decorated her arms and shoulders with elaborate tattoo sleeves in four colours of magic marker. She carried a leather motorcycle jacket, slung over one shoulder so as not to cover the artwork.

“What’s she supposed to be, a hipster?” muttered a voice behind Sally, who nearly answered “no, a biker,” before she recognized Gordon, in a t-shirt that said THIS IS MY HALLOWE’EN COSTUME. _Damn, almost blew my cover_. “And what’s with the sexy nurse and the rectal thermometer?” Gordon added, pointing at Sailor Mercury Nadia. Biting her tongue, Sally shrugged as best she could in her cardboard exoskeleton and looked around for an escape route. Staying too close to her friends might clue him in. As she looked for an opening, someone knocked against her shoulder, throwing her into Gordon, who yelled at her:

“Watch it buddy! What d’you think you’re doing?!”

“Sorry, dude” interrupted the skunk, balancing a plastic cup in each paw. “It was my fault – I knocked into the robot.” But Gordon remained determined to keep the blame where he’d originally aimed it:

“What, he can’t answer for himself?” _At least the disguise works_ , thought Sally. It had been all she could do not to say _Sorry_ automatically.

“There a problem?” Godzilla had left his corner and was ambling majestically towards them, the crowd parting before him like a special-effect Red Sea.

“I’m feeling really attacked here,” Gordon began, as the skunk simultaneously insisted:

“I accidentally dominoed the robot into him. I said sorry, but he wants an apology from the robot too.” Sally had a brainwave:

“Bleep bloop. Bleee-oop,” she squeaked in her best R2D2 imitation, hoping she sounded both contrite, and unlike herself. “Bleeee.” Gordon gave her a hard look, but Donald (it was Donald in the Godzilla suit, she was sure of it), laid a massive claw on her cardboard shoulder-pad.

“That sounded like an apology to me,” came his voice, slightly muffled by the plush mask. _He must be baking in there_ , she thought. He must not have recognized her voice, for he lifted his claw and turned to go. She followed, reasoning that this pre-cleared path was her best opportunity to walk away and identify herself to Donald – if she wished.


	10. Chapter 10

> _So we grow together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,  
>  But yet an union in partition; Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;_

“Hey, Godzilla!” It was Colin who shouted. “Look who’s here!” Turning carefully, Sally was in time to see him gesture with his caduceus at the doorway full of… Mecha-Godzilla?

* * *

Uh-oh. Sally tried to size up the newcomer from across the room, and through the mesh of her helmet. Mecha-Godzilla was tall, wide – she couldn’t tell how much of the lumpy silver shape was the person inside and how much was padding, or maybe exoskeleton. Beside her, Godzilla chuckled and then roared playfully — he’d spotted his rival. She still couldn’t tell if the voice was Donald’s or not. The crowd parted for Mecha-Godzilla who drew nearer, emitting a staticky recorded noise — robotic roaring, and a theme tune. The costume had a voice chip. Of course it did. No way to try and recognize the wearer’s voice. Should she reveal herself? A glimpse of Gordon in the crowd decided her against it. Instead she bleeped and waved her oven-mitt claws as partygoers snapped pictures with their phones and Andy Warhol pulled out his vintage Polaroid camera.

“Godzilla Vs. Mecha-Godzilla! Fight!” shouted the Sexy Highway, and the crowd cheered. A chant went up:

“Fight! Fight! Fight!”

“The robot can referee!”

Glancing fearfully between the two monsters, Sally saw they’d already turned to face one another, striking sumo wrestlers’ poses. There seemed no other course of action, so she waved a hand between them and jumped back as they charged. The Hallowe’en crowd went wild as the costumed behemoths grappled. Truthfully, she might have enjoyed watching it herself, had she known who to root for; and her chest tightened at the possibility neither beast was Donald — that he might for some reason have chosen not to come to the party at all. The two continued to jostle one another, until Godzilla, getting the upper claw, pulled the other into a bear hug and lifted him bodily off the ground. The entire room roared. Godzilla took a few paces into the crowd, finally setting down the squirming Mecha-Godzilla on a patch of bare floor that had opened up for him. Deciding she’d better call it, Sally clutched Godzilla’s arm and lifted it in victory. Mecha-Godzilla accepted defeat graciously, backing away with a bow — and into Gordon just as the latter was bellowing:

“FINISH HIM — oh *%^& it you loser! Why’s everyone shoving into me tonight?!“

“Oh, not him again,” said Godzilla. “Maybe we should step out back till things blow over.” Nodding inside her robot helmet, Sally followed the giant lizard to the fire door and stepped out into the laneway behind the building, to find him removing his head. She’d braced herself in case he wasn’t Donald, but was surprised to recognize the football player from her English class.

“Hang on a moment,” she said. “We’d better not leave Mecha-Godzilla at the mercy of Gordon.” _Even if it isn’t Donald in the suit._ “Let’s get him out here, say it’s for a photo.” They doubled back into the heat of the crowded room.

“Hey, bro –” Godzilla, unmasked, caught the mechanical lizard’s arm. “Can we get a picture together with the robot?” They left by the front door this time, Sally glancing back. Gordon seemed to have got lost in the crowd. Mecha-Godzilla gave his lower jaw a tug and it fell open, revealing Donald’s freckled face. He heaved a sigh of relief and sagged against the entrance.

“Thanks for the rescue. That guy is… unforgiving.”

“I know. Why do you think I came in disguise?” Sally pulled off her own helmet and was gratified by the engineer’s look of surprise and delight.

“It’s you!” He grabbed her oven mitt. “Nice costume.”

“But not soundproof.” She rolled her eyes in the direction of the party and winced. “Do you want to, I don’t know, find a coffee shop and come back here later? Maybe he’ll have calmed down or left.”

“Sure.” Donald glanced at Godzilla but the latter shrugged:

“I’ll just have a beer and ignore him. See you two later.”

Somehow, during the subsequent discussion of what places might still be open, the topic of the crosswalks came up again; and it suddenly seemed to Sally like a _really_ good night to paint them, seeing as how she and Donald were already in disguise anyway.

“I picked up some white spray paint when I ran out of black for the costume and had to go to the hardware store,” she said. “It’s in my room.” Fifteen minutes later a large silver lizard and a black robot were clumsily attempting to unroll a long strip of masking tape, when a scream rang out.

“Was that a party scream or a someone-in-danger scream?”

“Better check. I think it came from near the student centre.”

It is not easy to run in most Hallowe’en costumes, and Donald was not built for speed in any case. Sally was a couple of minutes ahead of him when she saw the source of the screams. Someone with intentions much more nefarious than theirs had also reasoned that a night where everyone was disguised was a good night to break laws; someone had attempted to mug the old lady in the yellow flip flops (though she hardly looked the sort to be carrying a lot of valuables), and she was having none of it. _Call the police on your phone – oh damn._ Her phone was back in her room; Hallowe’en costumes usually don’t have pockets, either. _Try bluffing._

“Hey! What’re you doing?!” Better get their attention before threatening to call the cops. There were two of them, in rubber animal masks, and both turned slightly at the sound of her voice. The old lady took that moment to kick one, and Sally promptly abandoned the thought of convincing anyone she had a phone – they were too busy to pay any attention. She leapt at someone’s back and made an effort to pin his arms, but found herself thrown to one side, the mesh of her costume-helmet painful against the side of her face. The lady was still screeching. Sally made a second attempt to bring down at least one attacker, this time grabbing wildly at a foot she saw on the ground before her. It worked, and a figure in jeans and a horse-head mask dropped with a curse. She caught a glimpse of a yellow sandal kicking his shoulder, but he sat up and scrambled towards Sally.

CLANK!

“Unf!” 

The second mugger, in a chimp mask, collapsed on Horse-Mask and did not get up. Donald had finally arrived, breathing a bit heavily but with inertia very much on his side. Horse and Chimp had not fared so well against him as Godzilla had, Sally thought. She crawled towards the old lady, now slipping her feet back into her yellow flip flops with a surprising calm.

“Are you alright dear? The bat was right about you, I see.”

_What?_

“Sally!” Somebody in unwieldy armour – Donald of course – was pulling her to her feet and hugging her breathlessly.

Afterwards, there followed police and an hour of bewildering questions before the two muggers (no one Sally recognized, when their masks were removed) were taken away and another officer saw the old lady safely home.

“Still up for coffee?” asked Donald. “I don’t much feel like going back to the party, or to the crosswalk. Just as well we hadn’t started painting – it would have been awkward to explain to the cops.” They’d stripped off the more unwieldy parts of their costumes by then, and Sally had abandoned her cardboard armour in a trash bin, though she still carried her headpiece. There was a pink imprint of the mesh on her cheek, but nothing so severe it wouldn’t fade by morning. She suddenly found herself shaking.

“We – we just did that,” she stammered. “We fought two guys. Two scary guys.” Donald put his arms around her, calming her with his size and warmth.

“Should I walk you home instead, then?”

“Yes. I – I think the adrenaline’s worn off. Don’t really want to be alone right now.”

“What did the old lady mean about a bat?”

“A bat?”

“I thought I heard her say ‘the bat was right about you.’ Maybe I just misheard.”


	11. Chapter 11

As they turned back towards the campus, Sally stumbled and fell against Donald, who automatically threw his arm about her. **  
**

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you home,” he murmured.

“Actually, I’m starting to think I could go for that coffee after all.” Across the street, the lights were still on in a late-night cafe, and a pleasant dark smell of roasting beans drifted to where they stood under a light.

“Whatever makes you feel better,” Donald smiled.

The cafe looked like every pop-up urban coffee bar, but had in fact been there for many years and was the sort of local hangout that those other coffee bars aspired to be. Nonetheless, the management had recently caved to the popularity of seasonal drinks, and when Sally and Donald reached the counter, she was able to order a pumpkin spice latte from the menu.

“My treat,” said Donald hastily before she could pay. “And I’ll have a regular coffee and a slice of pumpkin pie, please.”

“Thanks,” said Sally.

“One pumpkin spice, one regular – if you can stop arguing with my brother for two minutes” said the cashier loudly towards the other end of the counter, where an argument was going on between the barista and a man who gloomily sipped a double espresso as he leant on the bar.

“I admit the fair trade coffee may not solve all the world’s problems,” came the barista’s voice from behind the espresso machine, “but every drop in the bucket helps. It can’t be a bad thing if the workers are at least getting paid properly.”

“We should pay a proper price for a product,” agreed the other man, “but that’s to keep _us_ honest. Anything more is just being patronizing towards people in another part of the — I think you’ve got a customer, Pete.” He stepped aside for Sally and the barista peered around the espresso machine.

“You’re the pumpkin spice?”

He was a tall stout young man in hipster glasses, and Sally couldn’t help looking him over appreciatively, only to immediately feel a twinge of guilt — true, she wasn’t exactly dating Donald, but it bothered her to think her affections could be so changeable.

“I’m the customer who ordered the pumpkin spice,” she said, determinedly, with a glance back at the engineer. Pete blinked, embarrassed, and she felt bad again, this time for snapping at him; but the cashier’s brother smiled for the first time. “Sorry, rough night,” she said to them both. “And Donald – my friend here – is the regular coffee.”

They took their drinks to a wooden table in the corner, and the young woman who’d taken their order brought over Donald’s slice of pie on a plate. The engineer ate it in silence, occasionally throwing Sally a concerned glance.

“I’m all right,” she said eventually. “Just – I’ve never fought anyone. Well, not since middle school anyway. Thanks for the backup, by the way. I don’t think I’d have done well otherwise.”

“Any time. For what it’s worth, you did good.” He looked for a moment as if he was going to add something,then looked down at his empty plate.


	12. Chapter 12

_Turn melancholy forth to funerals;_

_The pale companion is not for our pomp._

“Feeling better?” Donald asked, after washing down his second piece of pie with a swig of coffee.

“The only thing that still upsets me about this evening,” said Sally, slightly wired from her pumpkin spice latte (the shop brewed very strong coffee). Pete, the barista in the glasses, had apologetically mentioned a few minutes earlier that they were about to close, and Mary, the cashier, had added that they didn’t actually have to leave until the doors were locked, but would it be all right if she started shutting down the espresso machine? So Sally and Donald shrugged their Hallowe’en costumes back on as all about them the staff placed chairs upside-down on the tables and moved the milk and cream to the refrigerator in the back. Sally was glad they’d got their drinks in paper cups.

“I’m just sorry,” she continued, “that we never got to paint the crosswalk. I’ve still got the spray cans of course, but the police have seen our costumes, so they’re not much use as disguises now.”

* * *

Pete, wiping down the countertops nearby, made a surprised noise, then blushed a vivid pink that was noticeable even in the dim light.

“Sorry, couldn’t help overhearing.”

“We have this idea to install a crosswalk,” Donald explained. “There really should be one at the corner by the student centre, for practical reasons, but the city’s never put one there.” The barista’s round face split in a delighted grin.

“Alex,” he shouted at the gloomy customer, “these people are guerilla city planners!”

“Impractical!” growled Alex from the other end of the counter, “and, in the grand scheme of things, useless.”

“Never mind the grand scheme of things,” said Pete, “On a purely local level—”

“Do you need any help with it?” Mary interrupted, to Sally’s great relief.

So it was that ten minutes later, Sally, Donald, and the staff (and customer) of the Magic Moscow Coffee Shop* were shaking cans of spray paint and laying down masking tape on asphalt. Pete and Alex (still arguing about utility and micro- vs. macro-interventions) watched for cars or passers-by, but despite it being Hallowe’en night, the corner was quiet.

“Everyone’s partying in the residences,” Donald commented.

“It’ll fade, you know,” said Alex, as he gazed sadly at their finished work. “Even faster than the paint the city uses.”

“I’m hoping it will have made the point by then,” said Sally, who thought the crosswalk looked pretty good, even if there was no mistaking it for an official one. She yawned. “I’m afraid your coffee is wearing off.”

“I’ll walk you home if you like,” said Donald. “I mean, I guess that’s what I was doing anyway when we stopped for coffee.”

Sally, surfing on an ebb-tide of adrenaline and sleep deprivation, felt bold enough to link her arm through his as they set off. Donald did not appear to mind.

The pair slowed their walk as they drew near (the women’s residence), and Donald cleared his throat nervously:

“Well,” he began, “thank you for a lovely evening of crime-fighting and crime-doing; and, erm, feel free to tell me to bugger off if I’m barking up the wrong tree; in which case I’ll never mention the subject again; but, if I have got the right tr— “ He stopped and ran one hand nervously through his red hair. “Look,” he said, “would you like to kiss goodnight?”

Sally looked up at him and stood experimentally on tiptoe.

“Yes,” she said, “but we’d better go over to those steps so I can get enough height.” She led him to the building entrance ( _Tie up my love’s tongue, bring him silently_ ) and tried the first step, then climbed onto the concrete bollard (?) beside it and flung her arms about Donald. Before closing her eyes she noted with pleasure that the engineer’s double chin was even more pronounced when he bent his head downward to kiss her.

Donald’s lips were warm, and soft, and he tasted of coffee but not unpleasantly and anyway so did she, and he was holding her very carefully as though he feared breaking her. Sally pressed herself closer, wanting to sink into his cosy, ample self.

 

*Daniel Pinkwater forgive me, or at least please don’t sue.


	13. Chapter 13

After kissing on the steps for a while, Sally and Donald had moved to enter the university residence; and hearing the lobby elevator doors opening, had then ducked into the nook by the mailboxes in order to kiss some more. This manoeuvre, however, had restored the problem of their disparate heights. 

“Mmm just a moment—“ Sally mumbled to Donald who was awkwardly bending over her. He’d unzipped his Godzilla costume to the waist once they were indoors. The t-shirt beneath had no caption, but simply a cartoon of a platypus playing a keytar. 

Placing her hands on the granite counter by the mailboxes, Sally did her best to jump up and seat herself on its projecting corner; seeing what she meant to do, Donald lifted her up with a grunted apology and set her lightly upon the stone ledge. 

Turning herself so that she was, as it were, seated sidesaddle on the corner of the counter, and blushing a little at her own audacity, Sally lifted Donald’s prominent belly and placed it across her lap. Now she could now pull Donald close enough to her side that, if he turned his head a little—

“Is this all right?” she whispered. Donald leaned in and replied with a very firm kiss.

* * *

Eventually, Sally and Donald moved locations from the mailboxes to the elevator, and from there to Sally’s room, where, half-sitting, half-lying on Sally’s bed, it was much easier for her to lean across the engineer’s large, well-padded frame.

“All that rehearsal has paid off,” observed Donald, between kisses. He inclined his head and gently touched the tip of his nose against hers, and smiling, closed his eyes.

Sally caressed his cheek and suddenly pictured a science text she’d seen as a child, in which dots, representing galaxies, were placed on a balloon, representing space, which was then inflated to demonstrate the universe expanding. She wondered whether Donald’s freckles would stretch or spread apart if he continued to grow. Or would new freckles appear to fill the gaps?

She stifled her giggles in his shoulder; moments later, she felt his plump fingers stroking her hair, and tensed involuntarily.

He noticed, and drew his hand away.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s all right. Only my hair’s very tangly.” Donald placed his hand gently against the centre of he back.

“Is this better?” She murmured assent and they stayed like that for a while.

* * *

“Do you need to kick me out before your roommate comes back?” asked Donald, nodding in the direction of Nadia’s bed on the other side of the room.

“She’s hardly the kind to force me to wear a scarlet letter. Want to stay over? Does the slime mold need feeding in the early morning or anything?”

The engineer chuckled and Sally felt his body jiggle deliciously against hers.

“Not till later in the day. I should get back to my room early enough to get some proper clothes on though. Can’t walk around in a Godzilla suit in the daytime.” 

“True enough,” Sally yawned. “I’ll set an alarm.”

* * *

Sally had once read a comment online that even the most pleasant sound, if you make it your morning alarm, will become despicable; and that was certainly true of digital birdsong on the morning of the thirty-first of October. Even waking in the arms of a bearishly amiable young man was not a complete consolation. Donald, for his part, groaned and tried to hide his head under the pillow until Sally murmured:

“The sooner you get up, the sooner you can come back and meet me for breakfast,” whereupon he almost jumped out of the bed.

* * *

Twenty minutes later Sally, in the dining hall, was checking local news on her phone.

“I don’t see anything about the crosswalk yet,” she told Donald as he sat down with his loaded tray. “Perhaps no one’s noticed.”

“Well, it’s not yet nine in the morning, on a Saturday after a Hallowe’en party. Half the campus isn’t even awake yet, I expect.”

“There’s the football player who was Mecha-Godzilla last night,” Sally countered, pointing to him with her spoon. “I guess I should find out his actual name sometime.” 

Football-Mecha-Godzilla walked by their table, talking on his phone:

“No,” he was saying, “It must’ve been the other Godzilla who stopped the muggers.”


	14. Chapter 14

There were always rehearsals on Saturdays.

People were using the crosswalk, Sally noticed, without comment, and as though it had always been there. The drivers were observing it too.

No one commented either when she and Donald walked into rehearsal holding hands. Today they were working on the reconciliation between Titania and Oberon. Sally and Donald took their positions on the floor, Donald sleeping with his head in Sally’s lap.

“You do wonder why I go back to Oberon,” she asked. “I mean, you’d think finding out he’d had his minion roofie me and set me up with some donkey guy would make me more upset with him, not less.”

“I think you’re going to have to play it as “Titania’s not human, and doesn’t react as a human would,” offered the director.

“Or Titania’s playing along until she can take the kid and run,” muttered Donald from her lap, his eyes still closed. Sally mussed his hair. To the director she said, 

“We could try playing it as ‘Titania’s going to get her own back at some point.’”

The scene moved on. Titania and Oberon left the stage, and Sally took a seat at the side of the room to watch Bottom wake up, entirely human again and trying to remember, much less make sense of, what had happened. Donald broke off:

“I don’t— it feels like this is turning into a “how much did I drink last night?” gag. It should seem a bit more…?”

“Supernatural?” asked the director. Donald shut his eyes tightly and ran a hand through his hair. He tried the words again:

“I have had a most rare vision. 

I have had a dream, past the wit of man to

say what dream it —- oh, it’s the “Double Rainbow” guy.”

Everyone laughed, and Donald’s eyes flew open.

“No, seriously. I mean, that video is funny, but the guy really is having some kind of experience.”

“The kind 19th-century Romantics would kill for,” Sally piped up from the sidelines.

“Yeah,” Donald continued, nodding at her, “and it’s not his fault he can’t put it into words very well.” He added quietly, “ _Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream._ Do you guys mind if we take a break and I watch the video for a while?” 

“It’s about break time anyway,” said the assistant director. “Fifteen minutes, people.”

“Want to get coffee with me?” asked Sally as Donald fumbled with his phone, “or should I bring back for both of us?”

“I’ll come with you,” said Donald, scrambling to his feet with a grunt. “walking helps me think.” He seemed to be having some difficulty getting the phone back in his pocket. “Guess it’s time to admit I need bigger jeans,” he said ruefully as he gave up and zipped the phone into his knapsack; “these are too tight to use the pockets. Why’re you looking at me like that?”

“Nothing,” Sally smiled, and linked her arm through his.

Pete was behind the coffee shop counter this morning, though even surrounded by excellent sources of caffeine, he didn’t look fully awake. He brightened visibly, though, as the pair came in, and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

“The crosswalk seems to be working.”

“Anybody ask where it came from?” Donald wondered.

“No.”

“Good, then no one will suspect us,” Sally commented. “Medium roast in a medium cup, please. To go.” The barista picked up a paper cup and slipped a cardboard sleeve on it.

“And yourself?” he yawned to Donald. “Excuse me. Didn’t sleep much last night.”

“Also a medium medium roast. Erm, and I think I’ll get a cinnamon roll with my coffee.”

“Beautiful.”

They made it back to the student centre with ten minutes to spare, and Donald curled up with his video of the double rainbow. Sally watched over his shoulder as the man behind the camera asked himself in a wondering tone “what does it MEAN?” crying and laughing with excess emotion. 

The director and his assistant returned with their coffees, and the scene resumed:

“I HAVE HAD A MOST RARE VISION” Donald roared; then clapped his hand over his mouth, as if startled by his own volume. Everyone else certainly was. He laughed soundlessly for a moment, then continued in a whisper:

“I have had a dream.” He gave a nervous little giggle. “Past the wit of man to

say what dream it was,” he continued in an almost-conversational tone, then laughed again: “Man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream.” 

Burying his face in his hands, Bottom took a deep breath, trying to regain some semblance of calm. “Methought I was–“ he began; and halted. “There is no man can tell….what.” 

The room was silent as he struggled to his feet and tried pacing. _Walking helps me think,_ Donald had said.

“Methought I was —-“ he tried again to remember. “and methought I had—-“ He stopped and laughed at himself again, and there was a wistful catch in the laughter this time. Now he stopped pacing, and looked out at them: 

“But man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had.” The delivery was entirely serious. Then he yawned, and continued to himself in a faintly singsong voice:

“The eye of man hath not _heard_ , 

the ear of man hath not _seen_ , man’s hand is not able to taste, 

his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream

was…”

Sally watched with her chin cupped in her hands as Bottom decided to get Peter Quince to write a ballad of the dream that he couldn’t remember, and she suddenly thought of something small and fluttery she’d seen a few months earlier. Had there been a…. a bat, in her room? At the start of term? 

And then she forgot again.


	15. Chapter 15

_but, O, methinks, how slow This old moon wanes!_

_  
_Hallowe’en proper came and went. Donald and most of the other students in his residence celebrated “Discount Chocolate Day” on November second; he sent Sally photos of the jenga tower they’d built out of fun-size candy bars.

  
The student and local papers reported on the new unofficial crosswalk, but did not speculate on who might be responsible, other than Banksy. The city tried to decide whether to scrub it off or paint over it, and in the meantime it continued to be used by pedestrians. 

  
Dress-rehearsal and tech run approached. Poppies were pinned to coats.

  
Mid-way through November Christmas decorations started to go up. In both Sally’s and Donald’s residences, the students simply added them to the Hallowe’en decorations, which had not been taken down after October. After someone put a Santa hat on the plastic skeleton that occupied the broken armchair in the women’s third-floor common room, Donald added a cardboard sign that read “HAPPY XMASWEEN.” He and Sally had a lengthy debate about whether or not to place an apostrophe between the Es.

  
They’d taken to spending their time together in Sally’s room rather than Donald’s, after Sally had mentioned that Gordon gave her the creeps.  
They’d turned Sally’s twin bed into a sort of divan by heaping all the cushions against the wall at one end; and Donald was curyled up against them while Sally was curled up against him, he being as soft as the cushions and a great deal warmer.

  
“It does seem weird,” Sally yawned, “to put on _Dream_ at this time of year.” Outside the windows the weather was grey and attempting to freeze drizzle into sleet. Donald looked over her shoulder:  
“It does look more like _Hamlet_ weather out there.”  
“Or _Lear_. Definitely weather for freaking out on the heath.”  
“Maybe next year.”  
“You’d be good as Kent.”  
“That’s the guy who tells Lear what an idiot he’s being?”  
“The same. He’s my favourite, because—” Sally paused to think about it. “Everybody in that play goes through hell, but Kent’s one who has to do it totally sane and sober. There’s this bit where Lear’s mad, Edgar’s pretending to be mad, and the Fool is mad more-or-less as his job description; and they’re all screaming and ranting; and then there’s poor Kent – the designated driver.”  
“And that’s how you see me?”  
“You have a very solid core.” 

Sally felt Donald’s chest and belly heave in a sigh that breathed warmly past her ear, and realized she had mischosen her words.


	16. Chapter 16

“If I’ve a solid core it’s awfully well-buried.”  
Sally turned about in time to see a wistful and embarrassed expression cross Donald’s broad, soft face.  
  
 _I actually prefer… I hope that isn’t too weird….  
  
The appeal is in the combined impression of softness and strength  
  
…at once heroic and endearing_  
  
 _I mean, it’s your body, you can do what you like, but if you were thinking of losing weight to please me I assure you it’s quite unnecessary_  
  
All the explanations and apologies she’d rehearsed, had rehearsed even **before** she’d met Donald, for she’d long known that if she ever found a man to her tastes, and he responded likewise, that this was an inevitable conversation— all of that blanked out of Sally’s mind, and she shivered as she said:   
  
“Oh my lovely boy.”  
  
Donald, it seemed, noticed the shiver more than the words. He murmured:  
“This is the best time of year for a fat man. In summer I melt, but on a day like this I feel like a polar bear or a seal, all snug in myself. But you must be freezing, even in here.” He stretched out his arms. “Never let it be said of me that I was not a nice hot-water-bottle for my girlfriend.”  
He was, too, and Sally relaxed into that great pillow of a stomach and let him tuck a fold of his voluminous hoodie around her.   
“There you go,” he said. “Warm as if you were the dining-hall pass in my shirt-pocket.”  
  
There was a knock at the door to Sally’s room.  
“Are you decent in there?” came Karen’s voice.  
“No!” called Donald.  
“More or less,” Sally contradicted. “What do you want?”  
“Can Colin change the sign on your skeleton? He wants it to say BE GAY, DO CRIME.”  
“If he wants to do crime, why ask my permission? Isn’t that kind of against the whole spirit of the enterprise?”  
“Ok, I’ll tell him you said yes.”  
  
“That was weird. Where were we?”  
“I was pointing out the advantages of a hefty boyfriend.”  
“And I was about to say that I don’t really need convincing.” Sally almost chucked Donald under his chins, lost her nerve and patted his cheek instead. The message appeared to get through, for he smiled, took her hand and kissed it; his eyes shut. She admired the way his sandy lashes delicately brushed his round cheeks.  
  
When they were able to speak again, Sally asked:  
“Ready for opening night?”   
Donald propped his head on his hand.  
“I was born ready; it’s showtime; and all the other action movie cliches that make slightly more sense when you’re talking about an actual stage performance.” Sally yawned and stretched.  
“How about ‘Let’s get out of here?’”  
“Do you have a destination in mind?”  
“Just the common room. I’ve got a few packets of hot chocolate mix left in the cupboard. And I’m curious as to what Colin’s doing to that gay, criminal skeleton; hardly his type, I should say.”  
“Well,” said Donald, “you’re one to talk.”


	17. Chapter 17

_Is all our company here?_

__  
For all Sally’s comments about opening night, this was only the dress rehearsal. In the black-box student theatre, the set was still going up, but the people in paint-spattered clothing seemed unhurried and unfazed as they made last-minute touchups. Someone’s phone, placed in the corner with a knapsack standing guard on either side, was serenading them with a strangely eclectic playlist: as Sally entered an orchestral work ended with a flourish and an electric bassline began to throb. The production designer, a woman with a Louise Brooks bob and a Louise Brooks face to go with it, was toying with a brush as she contemplated a backdrop that lay unrolled on the floor. She exchanged a few words with her assistant, a man with butter-coloured hair and wire-rimmed glasses.  
“Are they going to have it ready in time?” Sally asked doubtfully.  
“It’ll be all right,” said Donald with some confidence. “I saw ‘em go through this last year, with the set painters drifting around calmly like chain-smoking angels while everyone else was tearing their hair out. The scenery will be done just in time, but it’ll be done.”

* * *

  
“This suit mine or yours?” In the green room, people were checking inside costumes for their names on strips of masking-tap. Anna, the costume designer, had opted to outfit the human characters, and the fairy royalty, in vaguely 1920s outfits; Puck in handpainted leggings that made him look like a scruffier version of Nijinsky in _L’Apres-midi d’un Faune_ ; and the rest of the fairies in tights under wisps of cobweb (painted cheesecloth) with crowns (twigs, dried and artificial flowers, and Christmas ornaments, all hot-glued to headbands).   
“Ready to hold still?” Colin was unpacking the washable felt-tip pens. Just before the dress rehearsal, Anna and the director had decided that Titania should initially wear a shawl over her dress until her seduction of Bottom, at which point she would drop it to reveal arcane designs all over her bare arms and legs. Sally, remembering Karen’s Hallowe’en costume, had suggested Colin draw them on.   
“Should they be more like tattoos or mendhi, or do we want to go for trompe l’oeil scales or feathers?” he asked, as Sally pulled her sweater over her head.  
Anna was leafing through a large book with “The Grammar of Ornament” printed on the cover.  
“Maybe some of this Celtic-type stuff?” She showed him a page. “And in blue, so it looks like woad.”  
“Is woad light or dark blue?”   
“Go for both and we’ll see which looks better under the lights.” Colin uncapped a pen with his teeth and began tracing spirals and triskelions on Sally’s shoulder.

* * *

  
Up in the booth, the head lighting tech brushed a strand of curling hair from her eyes as she twiddled switches and knobs on the control board. She brought up the stage lights and the set (almost completely dry now) came to life. Outside it might be winter, but within the little theatre breathed a convincing if artificial summer night. The Christmas lights became fireflies and the dollar-store silk flowers looked convincingly dewy. The slick tinsel ornaments were changing into something older and weirder.  
  
Sally sat quietly in the green-room with everybody but Duke Theseus and Hippolyta, who were already onstage for the opening scene. She pulled her shawl around her shoulders, over her beaded slip dress, and smiled silently at Donald in his bow-tie and the 46 Tall (she’d snuck a look at the tags) seersucker suit Anna had somehow located for him. The actors were under strict instructions to remain quiet backstage, but he winked at her.   
  
Nearby, Colin was checking his phone; he hurriedly stowed it in the knapsack at his feet as the stage manager entered, and Sally stifled a laugh. At least he didn’t try to put it in his tights, she thought.  
Egeus, Hermia, Lysander and Demetrius left to wait in the wings, and the rest of the cast relaxed and spread out a bit more (it was a very small green room.) Shortly after, Helena got up to join Hermia onstage, as Egeus and Hermia’s suitors filtered back. The Mechanicals began checking their costumes and getting up to go on. Donald lifted his chins to straighten his bow tie, and gripped the lapels of his jacket. With a wave to Sally, he slipped out the door after his fellows and moments later she heard Bottom enthusiastically attempting to help Peter Quince direct that most lamentable comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe.  
Her entrance was coming up. She nodded at Colin and they went to the green room door with Oberon and another fairy close behind. Puck and the fairy were to converse briefly, introducing the situation; she let them by and took a deep breath in the dark. She could hear the dialogue clearly now through the canvas flats, though with no audience every line was met with silence. The mechanicals filed into the wings; Sally readied herself to be something other than human. The backstage smelled reassuringly of flat black latex paint. She stepped onstage and the light blazed about her.


	18. Chapter 18

It was strange how little Sally could feel or remember of the next two hours, but the memorized words and motions seemed to play out automatically whenever she was onstage, and whenever she was off she was waiting to go on again and couldn’t stop to think in case she missed a cue. She and Donald, the other actors, and the crew all revolved around each other, parts in a mechanism constructed centuries before.

Afterwards the co-directors gathered everyone for the usual notes: a few cues needed to be faster, a few lines needed to be spoken slower.  
“Remember, when and if we’ve actually got an audience and you get a laugh, to wait for them to finish before saying your next line, otherwise it’ll get lost. That’s the advantage live theatre has over movies and tv. Ok, you can go change out of your costumes now.”

“Everyone going to the Jolly Roger?” Sally asked Colin as she pulled on her coat afterwards.  
“Looks like. You and Donald coming? Marco’s got an evening class so I expect you two to distract me from my loneliness until 9:30 or so.”  
“I think we can manage that.”  
Donald came up, tugging his sweater down over his midsection, and gave Sally a hug.  
“Jolly Roger?” he asked.  
“Jolly Roger.”  
“Oh, I’ve got something to show you.” He held out his phone. Sally examined the image on the screen, which seemed to be of a map.  
“What am I looking at?”  
“My slime-mold campus map. Notice anything? Hang on.” He loomed over her shoulder and zoomed in on the student centre.  
“You added our cross-walk,” Sally exclaimed.  
“I didn’t add anything. That’s where the slime mild grew a connection. Just like the student body, it thinks that’s the most logical place for a crossing.”  
“He’s a keeper,” said Colin.


End file.
